White-Label Virtual Tours: How Do You Put Them on Your Own Domain?

Once you have been hosting tours for a while, the host's name starts showing up everywhere: in the URL you text to agents, on the tour page, in the browser tab. White-labeling takes it out. This guide covers what white-label actually means for a virtual tour, how putting tours on your own domain works, what it costs, and when the upgrade is worth it.

What does "white-label" actually mean for a virtual tour?

White-labeling means the tour looks like it came from you, not from a platform you pay. In practice that is two things: the page itself shows your logo and colors with no "powered by" line, and the link lives on a domain you control instead of the host's. A link like tours.yourstudio.com/123-main-st reads as your own software. A link like somehost.com/t/48217 tells every agent exactly which service you resell — and makes it easy for them to go find it themselves.

For a solo photographer that is mostly about looking established. For anyone building a studio brand or reselling to a brokerage that wants its own branding, it is closer to a requirement.

White-label vs. branded vs. unbranded — what is the difference?

These three terms get tangled, and they answer different questions. Branded and unbranded are about whose contact information appears on the tour — the agent's, or none at all. White-label is about whose software it appears to be.

• Branded tour — shows the agent's name, photo, and contact details. This is the marketing version the agent posts to their own site and social media.
• Unbranded tour — strips all agent contact info so it can go on the MLS, which forbids agent promotion on the tour field. Our guide to branded vs. unbranded tour links covers exactly what the MLS requires.
• White-label hosting — removes the host's branding and serves the tour from your domain. A white-labeled tour still has a branded and an unbranded version; the difference is that neither one advertises the company you pay to host it.

So white-label is a layer on top: you still deliver the agent both links, but both now live on your URL and carry no third-party logo.

How do you put a virtual tour on your own domain?

The whole thing is one DNS record. You are telling the internet that a subdomain you own should display content served by the host. The usual steps:

• Pick a subdomain — tours.yourstudio.com or view.yourstudio.com are common choices.
• In your domain registrar's DNS settings, add a CNAME record for that subdomain pointing at the host's DNS target.
• Tell the host which domain to serve for your account so it knows to answer for it.
• Wait for the change to propagate — usually minutes, but it can take up to 24 hours.

Ask the host about HTTPS before you set it up. Some hosts provision a certificate for your domain automatically; others serve custom domains over plain HTTP, which browsers label "Not secure". PFRE Tour white-label domains currently load over HTTP. One note on apex domains: a bare yourstudio.com cannot take a plain CNAME, so most photographers use a subdomain for tours and keep the apex for their main portfolio site. If you do not own a domain yet, some hosts — PFRE Tour included — will register a .com for you so you are not setting up a registrar account just for this.

Do you need a subscription to white-label your tours?

This is where hosts split. On the subscription platforms, white-labeling is a feature of a plan: Aryeo includes a custom URL on every plan, CloudPano puts it on its higher tier, and you pay the monthly fee whether you shoot thirty listings that month or zero. Pay-per-use hosts handle it differently — some, like Spiro, fold white-labeling into the per-listing price; others treat it as a paid add-on per tour.

PFRE Tour is in the second camp: white-label is a per-tour credit, not a subscription, so a slow month costs you nothing. If you are weighing the monthly-fee model against paying per listing, our breakdown of what virtual tour hosting costs by listing volume runs the numbers, and the PFRE Tour vs. Aryeo comparison lays out the subscription-versus-per-tour tradeoff directly.

What does white-label tour hosting cost?

On subscription platforms the honest answer is "it is part of the plan" — the real cost is the monthly fee, which you pay in every month, so the per-tour math depends entirely on your volume. On PFRE Tour, white-label is priced per tour so it scales with the work you actually do:

• $14 for a single white-label tour
• $12 each in 10-packs
• $10 each in 20-packs

Each includes two years of hosting and both branded and unbranded links, same as a standard tour — the premium over the $8–10 standard tour is what buys your domain and the removal of our branding. If you need a domain to point, we can register a new .com for $14. Compared with carrying a monthly platform fee through your off-season, per-tour white-label tends to win for photographers who do not shoot at high, steady volume.

When is white-label worth it (and when is it not)?

It is worth it when your brand is part of what you sell. If you are trying to get agents to think of the hosted listing as your studio's work, a host name in every URL quietly undercuts that. It is also worth it when a client — a brokerage, a team — wants its own branding on the tours you produce for them, which white-label lets you deliver without building anything.

It is not worth it when clean, MLS-compliant links are all you actually need and the host's name in the URL does not cost you anything with your clients. Plenty of working photographers deliver standard branded and unbranded links for years and never hear a complaint. If you are not sure what a hosted tour even needs to include before worrying about whose name is on it, start with what a real estate virtual tour is. You can also start standard and move to white-label once your brand is worth protecting — and if you are comparing full delivery platforms that bundle white-label with teams and client accounts, the PFRE Tour vs. HD Photo Hub comparison is the relevant one.

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